This is the second of a series of articles by faculty teaching at one of Temple’s international campuses. Brad Windhauser, Professor of Instruction in First-Year Writing & Gender, Sexuality, &Women’s Studies, describes settling into his semester-long appointment at TUJ in Tokyo. 

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I’ve been here for nine weeks, and it feels like I just arrived.

Between getting my welcome email that said I would be teaching at TUJ this Fall and getting my life together to make this trip, I had so much to do. It felt like I worked and worked and worked, and then, in a moment, I was in cab heading for the airport to start my journey.

I walked into a great situation upon arrival—TUJ had my apartment squared away, so when I exited the cab in Minato City with my two bags, the front desk person knew who I was and accompanied me to my apartment on the fifth floor. I had two bedrooms to myself—which felt huge, by what I knew of Tokyo’s standards—as well as a decent kitchen stocked with the cookware I would need. I also had a decent length couch, a TV (with CNN as a channel), WiFi, and fresh linens. 

I could relax. 

As someone who values routine, I met my new situation with a little anxiety: How do I make my new digs feel like home with relatively little from home? What would my mornings look like? How did I feel about Nespresso every morning when I was used to drip coffee? Would the store have gala apples, my breakfast of choice? How about navigating the city?

I’d read much about the trans pass situation, but the info confused me. The extensive transit system in Tokyo is comprised of multiple train lines, many of which are owned by different companies, so one pass did not work with all of them. Would I really have to buy multiple tickets a day, given my planned commute route used two different lines? Plus, there were plenty of things on my Japan wish list: places around town, such as Shinjuku, Harajuku I wanted to revisit; shrines, gardens and parks and woodblock print stores I’d missed my first visit six years earlier.

How does one act like a tourist while becoming a local?

Then of course there were my classes. I was looking forward to the semester starting, as this would ground my day-to-day experience here, but how to go about approaching my courses?

But first, I needed food before I crashed for the night after 30 hours of travel. I could have really gone for my favorite pizza place in Philly, but I was going to have to find some new favorite places here.

Before classes started, I had a week to settle in, which involved using Google Translate to grocery shop, locating a Pasmo card (an eZPass system that allows you to tap in and out of stations; lifesaving), and lots of sightseeing. Tokyo was as I remembered: loud, packed-with-people, endless amounts of energy, and with every neon sign, 3-D animal billboard, open store front, small izakaya or sushi restaurant, and shrines nestled amongst houses in neighborhoods, it was a feast for the curious eye. 

I was loving it, but I was also wondering how my classes were going to pan out.

For my two sections of English 802, I altered my syllabus to be more in line with the TUJ standard syllabus—the changes were minimal, and I still felt confident in the newly-shaped units. I did wonder about how this new setting would inform my classroom approach.

On main campus, I rely on cultural references I assume most of my students will recognize; this helps bring the content to life in ways that (hopefully) resonate with students and enhances their grasp of the material. I could not count on this approach working here. I enjoyed spending time during my prep combing the news for people of global interest, stories reported the world over. But in class, although several students appreciated being asked about global politics, it turns out most are familiar with American cultural touchstones—this was both interesting and sad. The reach of American culture does not always emphasize the best parts.

My Queer Lives course, which explores the impact of our culture and era on the lives of queer people, was the one I was more nervous about, in terms of students and content. Because I was teaching here in Tokyo, I added several writings by openly Japanese queer people. This proved to be an interesting challenge in a culture not known for being open about queer identity, especially earlier than the 1990s. I ended up spending a lot of money on small print-run books with first-person narratives.

This class also had my most diverse student body. Half were local students, so given the clashing cultural understandings, I was worried about meshing Western notions of queer identity with the more subdued local one. The Japanese-focused readings demonstrate the similarities of queer lives but also how the pull of family obligations and cultural expectations shape one’s embrace of the queer identity in profound ways. This has deepened my own appreciation for and understanding of queer lives around the world. Students keyed into this immediately and appreciated seeing these texts against the type of Western ideologies they had seen in various media depicting queer lives from the West. This was a relief because I had been warned by a Japanese student studying on main campus that local students would likely be reluctant to speak openly about queer lives in this culture.

I would be remiss to paint an impression that my time here has been all work. I scheduled my workload so that I would have most weekends free to explore. In addition to getting to know Tokyo better, I have also travelled via the Shinkansen bullet train to Osaka, Kyoto, Yokohama, Hiroshima, Katsuura, and Nagoya. Japanese culture is vast and varied, and any trip warrants as much travel as a person’s time will allow. I have also made use of the location for long weekends in Beijing and Taipei. Although I had not nearly enough time in any one of these spots, I saw enough to know that I want to return—never in my travel life have I had such access to so many World Heritage sites. 

With only a few more weeks to go, I am looking forward to what the rest of this wonderful opportunity has in store for me.